SCUM - Whitechapel (Barker & Baumecker remix)

SCUM - Whitechapel (Barker & Baumecker remix)
Touchstones abound on "Whitechapel," the closing track on S.C.U.M's debut LP for Mute, Again Into Eyes: there's Low-era Bowie, dashes of Madchester, heaps of Spiritualized and shoegaze. I actually find it odd that the "Manifesto" posted on the band's website describes the track as "a utopian, future-disco monolith," because aside from a certain hi-hat pattern, there's little futuristic or disco-ish about the thing. (I'll give them utopian, though.) As often happens with this sort of thing, "Whitechapel" falls short of transcendent, as the band can never quite move beyond being in thrall with the transcendent sounds that inspired it.

They have, however, made the inspired choice of bringing Ostgut Ton's Barker & Baumecker on board for a remix. The duo's penchant for dark, dense and deeply atypical big-room techno seems like an excellent choice for obfuscating the original's reference points. And it does. This "Panoramix" sounds a bit like a Euro-pop hit that's clawing its way back up from the depths: S.C.U.M's melody, either caged in by strobe lights or drowning in particularly ominous reverb, takes on a dreamily menacing quality that wasn't present in the original mix. Haunting or beautiful? Not exactly, although the track's final moments provide a pretty breathtaking view from the summit. Barker & Baumecker, though, are undoubtedly on their own tip here, and may just have made good on S.C.U.M's "future-disco monolith" promise.